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Put on your sequined vest and don’t let the band kids snub you— you’re show choir royalty with this week’s guest, Sydnee McElroy (Sawbones)! It’s all about singing, the raggle-taggle delights of high school theatre, and the long road to figuring out that it doesn’t take dress slacks and a pair of heels to prove you’re a grown-up. Show notes

Hasan Minhaj on Doing Stand Up Comedy in Other Countries and Air Jordans

Hasan Minhaj hosts the new Netflix show Patriot Act. He was also a correspondent on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, which he did up until August of 2018. His comedy is a mix of political and satirical comedy.

Hasan and Jesse talk about his one-man show, stand up comedy in other countries, and sneakers.

Sharon Horgan has a knack for the creating shows that reveal her characters as determined, funny, sexy, complex, and at times, very flustered. Her comedy has a lot of insightful observations into what it means to be a professional woman negotiating multiple roles including wife and mother. These themes are in full display on her show Catastrophe.

Sharon sat down with Jesse to talk about getting past the awkwardness of writing and filming sex scenes, the evolution of a relationship before and after having kids, and the reasons she likes playing a character who can sometimes come off as a jerk.

Armando Iannucci on The Thick of It & Veep, the writing process, and the humor in Stalinism

Armando Iannucci is a legendary comedy writer originally from Glasgow, now residing in London. He created hit shows such as The Thick of It and its offspring Veep. He developed the celebrated character, Alan Partridge, and wrote the screenplay for the 2009 political satire film In The Loop . He has won countless Primetime Emmy and BAFTA Awards, and has worked with some of comedy's greatest actors.
This week, Armando and Jesse sit down to talk about writing The Thick of It, working with renowned actors such as Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Peter Capaldi & Jeffrey Tambour, and how he found humor in Stalinism for his upcoming film The Death of Stalin.

Photo: Robin Marchant/Getty Images

Josie Long Performs

Josie Long is a British comedian who started stand-up at a young age, winning one of England’s most prestigious comedy awards at the age of 17. She has toured with legendary comedian Stuart Lee, and has performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe regularly over the past 10 years.
She performed a live stand-up set for Bullseye Live in London. Her latest BBC 3 short TOP TEN: Opinions That May Or May Not Have Got Me Dumped (Josie Long) is a good summary of Josie's comedic sensibility.

Sharon Horgan is a British comedy actor, writer, and producer. These skills have been used in tandem on many of her projects, most notably Catastrophe and Pulling. Her upcoming HBO show Divorce stars Sarah Jessica Parker.
Sharon and Jesse discuss the differences between Catastrophe and Divorce, writing about sensitive topics, and the autobiographical nature of her projects.

Romare Performs

Romare is a London based electronic music artist on the Ninja Tunes Label. His new album Love Songs: Part 2 will be released November 11th.

The Outshot: Devin the Dude

Jesse talks about the modesty in Houston rapper Devin the Dude’s songs.

Mike Judge on Silicon Valley, Beavis & Butt-Head and Office Space & the Challenges of Being a Showrunner

Mike Judge entered the world of animation with little more than a 16mm Bolex film camera, an audio recorder and a stopwatch. In the early nineties, his animated shorts were extremely popular as part of touring animation shows including Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Animation Festival. These shorts served as the birthplace for some of his most memorable characters, including the iconic Beavis and Butt-Head.

Beavis and Butt-Head were awkward and naive teenage boys, whose vocabulary seemed limited to a series of snickers and grunts. However, the show became a cultural touchstone as well as a lightning rod of criticism for conservative social critics.

The show led to more opportunities for Judge both in film and television. They included the hit animated series, King of the Hill and forays into films with the cult classics Office Space and Idiocracy. His latest show, Silicon Valley is in its third season on HBO.

Mike Judge joined Jesse to talk about the parallels between Hollywood and Silicon Valley, his early years in animation and how the character of Homer Simpson helped him maintain the integrity of his own animated patriarch, Hank Hill.

Sharon Horgan has a knack for the creating shows that reveal her characters as determined, funny, sexy, complex and at times, very flustered. Her comedy is more than a series of jokes (though there are plenty of them), and includes insightful observations into what it means to be a professional woman trying to negotiate her other roles of lover, wife and mother. In other words, a real person. You can see that in full display on her latest show, Catastrophe which streams on Amazon Prime.

Though she may be relatively new to American audiences, she has proven herself a talented actress, writer and producer and enjoyed success with her previous show, Pulling which she co-wrote and starred in. Though it ran only for two seasons on British television, it was nominated for several television and comedy awards and established her as a modern comedic voice.

Sharon Horgan sat down with Jesse to talk about getting past the awkwardness of writing (and then having to film) sex scenes with her co-star, the challenge of showing the evolution of a relationship before and after having kids and why she likes playing a character who can sometimes come off as a jerk.

Penelope Spheeris says that she loved punk rock when she first heard it in the 1970s because "the chaos was attractive and familiar to me." She directed, filmed and organized that chaos, spending time with LA punk bands Black Flag, the Germs, and X among others, for her movie The Decline of Western Civilization. She strived to show everything -- the good and bad -- and let the audience decide how they felt about the people on-screen.

The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years focused on the over-the-top lifestyles and big dreams of hair metal bands in the late 1980s. And the third film in Spheeris' Decline series went deep into the world of gutter punks in the 1990s.

After many years of VHS-to-DVD bootlegging, the Decline films are now available together for the first time in a box set on Blu-Ray and DVD from Shout! Factory, with a collection of bonus materials and commentaries produced by Spheeris and her daughter, Anna Fox.

Spheeris talks to us about the chaos in her own upbringing, the worlds of punk and metal as depicted in her documentaries, and directing a little feature film called Wayne's World.

The Sri Lankan-American singer-songwriter Bhi Bhiman encounters some challenges when he goes on-stage. As he tells it, " I have a couple of things going against me. I’m South Asian looking, I’m playing acoustic guitar and singing and as a general rule people just don’t want to see that. But I have to work up hill against that."

Bhiman's newest album Rhythm & Reason is loosely themed around the immigrant experience, but it's not as earnest as that sounds. He's got a Randy Newman thing going on, too.

Bhiman talks to us about not fitting people's expectations of a folk singer with a guitar, his inspirations for the new album, and why he's got love for the Newm.